Alessa

Ok, at the museum they decided to get a mandarin goby for the fish only 300 gallon. I wasn't very fond of the idea but...

Anyway, the dude at the store gave us a bottle of live copepods for the goby to eat. He said that they would survive on algae alone.

I just want to make sure that what he said is right. I don't want the mandarin to starve!

-A

harpua2002

A 300 gallon actually sounds good for keeping a mandarin, as long as there are not other fish that will compete with it for copepods. Are there copepods that you can see already in the system? Is there a refugium where they can reproduce in safety? What are the other fish in the tank? How old is the tank? Sorry for all the questions, I'm just curious because if the mandarin has to survive from only store-bought pods, it will get VERY expensive over time, LOL. They graze almost constantly and can wipe out a pod population like nobody's business if there is not a refugium.

Alessa

Yup, not a refugium

Well it is museum money so... I am going to suggest the refugium. Thanks for the heads up!

its like a 5 year old tank with:

spiny puffer,
yellow tang,
baby hippo tang,
3 firefish
1 flame angel,
1 imperator angel (juvenile),
1 flame hawkfish.

harpua2002

If the tank does not have a sump, there are hang on back refugiums that the museum could buy.

Alessa

We do have a sumo, but it is built weirdly. It has a bunch of chambers with different media types and I think that they would not make a nice refugium.

So, in that case I guess we would need a hang in the back one.